Problem of Understanding of the Aristotelian Idea of the Substance by Whitehead

Abstract

The problem which was Whitehead’s fundamental concern in the works of his later period was the problem of substance. The origin of theory of substance Whitehead finds in Aristotele’s dictum that a primary substance is neither predicable of nor present in a subject. This theory directly contravenes Whitehead’s own principle of universal relativity, that every actual entity is present in every other actual entity. Aristotelian substances are regarded by Whitehead as bare particulars, each conceived as being just its particular self with no necessary relevance to any other particular, inert and static, incapable of any change which is not a mere external adventure. To Whitehead, the Aristotelian formula is equivalent to Descartes’ definition of substance: “an existent thing which requires nothing but itself in order to exist.”

Whitehead’s equation of Aristotelian substance with Descartes’ and Lockean’s definition rests upon a gross misunderstanding. Aristotele’s theory conceives substance as dynamic and interrelated, contrary to what Whitehead supposed. There is no “undifferentiated endurance” for the Aristotelian substance. There is, on contrary, intrinsic development, change, becoming. The reason why it is legitimate to predicate contrary predicates of the same substance at different times is precisely because the substance itself has changed.